Tagged: Marguerite Bennett

Marguerite Bennett is stacking up quite the bibliography and buzz. With all the hubbub around her new Batwomansolo series, it’d be easy but unforgivable to forget the first collection of her series at Aftershock Comics: Animosity.

Bennett and artist Rafael de Latorre (Superzero) craft a really fun apocalyptic concept. We human beings should all be terrified if the animals of the world we’ve constructed gain the capacity to reason and communicate as we do. We cage them. We domesticate them. We experiment on them. What happens when the rats decide to break down the walls? What are consequences when your pet iguana can tell you what he really thinks of the things you do behind closed doors? How will you get to work if the birds decide to start making kamikaze dives through your car windshields? Get ready to find out!

The animals can talk, think, and they’ve decided to begin taking their revenge. How? That’s an answer you’ll have to search for in the book. One thing’s certain, they’re bringing chaos and the creators are self-aware of the possibilities of this concept. There’s definitely some fun to be found with the newfound form of consciousness and reasoning that the animals gain. And then the story finds its focus on Jesse, an eleven year-old girl, and her dog, Sandor, who proves that dogs may be mankind’s best friend. Sandor is devoted to Jesse and swears to protect her even as many of his species are drooling at the prospect of bloodying their jowls with their owners. One year after this awakening, Jesse and Sandor begin one of the craziest road trips since Preacher and Y: The Last Man to find Jesse’s half-brother, Adam, who is living in San Francisco and who could be the last bastion of safety for the duo.

Collecting the first four issues of the best-selling series, plus the special one-shot issue Animosity: The Rise. Read the book that, as the solicits from the publisher say, “EVERYONE is talking about.”

Kate Kane’s been through a lot. She lost her sister and mother as a child. She served in the military to follow in her father’s footsteps. She got kicked out of the army because she refused to betray herself. Then, she returned and took up the mantle of the bat, a symbol to serve a greater cause than one’s own survival made infamous by her cousin, Bruce Wayne AKA Batman! A soldier hardened by war, recovering from experiences fighting a Batman-inspired armed unit known as the Colony that her father created, she made the hardest choice of her life: Locking up the person she counted on the most to support her. Now, her mission is leading Kate away from Gotham but possibly back into the hands of her own demons.

The next era of Batwoman’s adventures start here in this one-shot that’ll get you primed and pumped for her ongoing series. We recently learned that Monster Venom is the hottest new bioweapon on the black market. An organization called “The Many Arms Of Death” is planning to take it global. Batwoman must return to the place where she spent some her (and Kate Kane’s for that matter) darkest hours. Learn where Batwoman comes from and learn where she’s going next as the stage is set for the must-read series you’ll be adding to your pull list.

With the first 5 volumes of the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo run on Batman, we the reader got a series of cohesive and quite excellent stories by the same team of creators. Those who have been reading the book monthly have had a different experience, as there has been several issues that have interrupted this run with some guest creative teams. Volume 6 is a collection of those issues, which range back to as far back as 2012 and as recent as 2014. Needless to say, this book is a bit disjointed, with some of the material dated already.

One of the biggest things to occur during the Snyder/Capullo era was the death of Damian Wayne, which occurred over in the Grant Morrison/Chris BurnhamBatman Inc. title. With it not happening in Batman proper, trade waiters now finally get to see that event addressed by Snyder and several other creators in a few different stories. The downside of that is that Damian was already revived earlier this year (with an ongoing set to debut soon), so said stories kind of lose their impact. It’s even worse if you’ve only been reading this incarnation in trade, as there’s zero explanation as to how Damian passed. There are also 2 Year Zero-era tales included, which is odd for several reasons. The biggest one being that Year Zero was already collected in Volumes 4 & 5, and would have made more sense being included there than in this volume. Finally, the last story collected is tied into the recently concluded Batman: Eternal, which I feel would have been suited for one of those trades more so than this one.

So while this book feels scatterbrained and uneven, it also looks fairly sharp. Greg Capullo is joined by a ton of talented artists. Andy Kubert, Dustin Nguyen, Alex Maleev, Andy Clarke and Matteo Scaleraare some of the more notable contributors and while their styles are all wildly different, they all bring their A game. It’s a little jarring to see different artists tackle the Gotham envisioned by Greg Capullo at first, but these veteran artists contributions are great none the less. It helps that Scott Snyder oversees if not straight up writes a lot of the guest stories, so the tone feels consistent throughout the collection.

Joining Snyder on writing duties are two of his former students, James Tynion IV and Marguerite Bennett. The Snyder penned material is obviously the strongest, and Tylion and Bennet aren’t exactly slouches either. Similar to Snyder, both writers mix horror and action scenes well, although none of their dialogue ever hits as hard as Synder’s does. It’s almost a bit of a unfair comparison, as neither of those two have Greg Capullo to work with. The story written by Gerry Duggan is antiquate: not the best Batman story in this volume, but nothing wrong with it, and it looks great. Matteo Scalera was a perfect fit to draw a Batman story, and his stylistic take on the character is fantastic.

Batman Volume 6: The Graveyard Shift is a weird anthology of sorts. The Snyder/Capullo issues are great, and anyone who’s dug their work in the past won’t be disappointed. The other issues require some knowledge of the going-ons in other DC comics, but are enjoyable none the less. It’s not the best collection of Bat-Material in this run, but it’s a fun little collection of stories that will hold you over until Endgame is reprinted. A shame it’s not as accessible as the past collections have, but that’s not really on the creators as it is on whoever decide to collect the book like this.

On October 6th at 7 o’clock, Forbidden Planet is going to have a whole slew of amazing creators in-store. Writer James Tynion IV (The Woods, Batman Eternal) and artist Michael Dialynas ( The Woods) will be here as well as writer Marguerite Bennett (Batgirl, Batman), writer Chris Antzoulis (Paladin) and artist Fabio Valle (Paladin) will all be here to sign copies of their respective books. Woo.